The oldest tension in advertising — who decides where the money goes — is being renegotiated once again, this time with a machine on one side of the table.

At its annual UnBoxed conference, Amazon introduced what it calls Amazon Ads Agent, a platform that uses artificial intelligence to recommend not just how advertisers should optimize their campaigns but which formats they should buy in the first place. The system spans the full funnel, from streaming video at the top to search ads at the bottom, and positions itself as a kind of all-knowing guide through Amazon's increasingly Byzantine advertising ecosystem.

"Amazon Ads Agent helps you move faster and with more confidence," Kelly MacLean, a vice president at Amazon Ads, said during the keynote. "When you're spending less time on mechanics, you get to ask the better question: What else is possible for my brand?"

It is a question that some advertisers are not yet ready to let Amazon answer for them.

Zach Ricchiuti, a vice president of strategy at the agency Kepler, said that while AI tools have clear applications in planning and research, execution remains a human concern. "That's where we still have people stepping in and making decisions," Mr. Ricchiuti said. "That's the nuance that you still need."

He noted that it took years for Google's Performance Max — another black-box optimization product — to earn advertiser trust. "The job of a brand and agency is to be skeptical of what a black-box solution is," he said.

(One might observe that skepticism is easier to maintain when the box belongs to someone else.)

Omnicom Media Group, for its part, has built its own recommendation tool for Amazon spending, one that operates on similar principles but with the agency's hand on the dial. Mike Feldman, the group's global head of commerce, said every product his team builds is now "agentic-enabled."

So the machines are coming for the media plan. The question, as always, is who gets to argue with them.

Original story published in adweek.com: "ADWEEK Commerce Advantage: Amazon's AI-Driven Future Leaves Some Buyers Weary of Losing Control"